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E-Sata / USB 3 Card for Mac Pro

Will Keir

Will Keir

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Hey guys, I'm looking to speed up my IO in my Mac Pro. FW800 is just too slow. So I am looking for a card to enable use of e-sata connectors and USB 3. Perhaps even thunderbolt?

http://eshop.macsales.com/item/CalDigit/FASTA6GU3/

This one looks like a good one, but it has been delayed for the last 3 months it seems. Any lucky enough to pick one up and review it?
 
I believe I am limited to 3g by the Mac Pro, so a 6g card does me no good?

http://eshop.macsales.com/item/Newer Technology/MXPCIE6GS2/

So I could never see the speed in a card like this 6g one for OWC?
 
The CalDigit card is the best option for adding both eSATA and USB3 in one slot. I have no experience with the NewerTechnology eSATA card. Only drawbacks to the card is both the USB3 ports share a single header and same for the eSATA ports. It's the most versatile card of its kind, but it does have some internal bandwidth issues if you try using all the ports simultaneously.


As for 3G limitations, not sure what you're talking about, there' no such thing. Just be sure you install the card in a PCIe v2 slot so it's bandwidth isn't cut in half. Not a problem on '09 and newer Mac Pro systems. On '08 Mac Pro systems, your two X4 slots are PCIe v1.1 and on earlier generation Mac Pro systems, there are no v2 slots.
 
Jeff Kilgroe said:
As for 3G limitations, not sure what you're talking about, there' no such thing
Click to expand...

Jeff thanks for being there to help out as always.

The card is rated for 6g and I believe my 4,1 Mac Pro can only do 3g.
 
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Hi Will, we have stock of the caldigit card, i would suggest searching for another source.
this Caldigit is limited in speed if you would use a recent SSD harddisk,
but its fine for most normal spinning harddisks, where speeds are not more than 200MB/s.
Having 2x esata and 2x usb3 is a fine combination when the number of slots is limited in the macpro.

you can also have a look at the www.hptmac.com usb3 products, with all the new usb3 drives on the market.
The new Lacie rugged usb3/thunderbolt is a interesting combination to replace their usb3/fw800 versions.

also the Highpoint SAS cards can support a SAS-to-4esata cable.
i have just received the 2722 and will do some testing to replace
the Atto H680 which only supports 1 esata disk on the SAS connections
 
Thanks for the info Filip, good to have ya around.
 
Will,
I have this card sitting in my 2009 MacPro and it works great. Like Jeff said, if you try and use s eSATA or 2 USB3 drives to write too, then it slows things up. One eSATA and one USB3 works great though.

I am looking at putting this into my Sonnet Thunderbolt Chassis shortly, so will see how that fairs in there.

:))
 
That's awesome, thanks Steve. It still seems like it's the best option for eSATA and USB 3 out there. Where'd you get yours from?
 
I do have this card, two of them actually. The USB3 header seems to be shared to the two ports. Both eSATA ports seem to share a header as well. You can run all 4 ports at once just fine, but you can't get full speed on both eSATA ports simultaneously and you can't get full speed on USB3 ports simultaneously. Still works great and is the best option of its kind out there that I'm aware of.

Safe Harbor -- Sharbor.com -- should have these cards in stock.

Card works great in the Sonnet Thunderbolt chassis or in a Mac Pro or PC.

There is no 3G limit in the Mac Pro as you're saying. The bandwidth of the PCIe interfaces in the '09 Mac Pro (4,1) exceed the potential of this card anyway. I'm not sure where you're getting that little tidbit of information, but it has nothing to do with this card or 6Gbps SATA interfaces on this card or any other eSATA / SAS card. The internal SATA host within the Mac Pro itself is limited to 3Gbps. Perhaps that is what you're thinking? But that is the internal host on it's own and has no bearing on any other interface you might add.

If you don't need USB3 and just want the best SATA connectivity, you may want to look at the ATTO H680 card. It's double the price, but gives you (via two miniSAS to eSATA fan-out cables) up to 8 eSATA ports at 6Gbps each. You can also connect SAS devices like larger RAIDs or LTO tape drives. I use these in my Mac Pro systems, connecting one SAS port to an LTO tape for backup purposes. The other is usually a fan-out cable for connecting eSATA devices. On the system I'm sitting at this moment, I have one free eSATA connector and the other three are connected to my RED Station stack of dual SSD readers and one 2.5" REDMAG reader.


The USB3 ports on this card, as well as most USB3 ports on the market, even those in my Z820 monster workstation, don't play nice with most newer SSDs on the market. Performance is quick, but sluggish compared to what it should be. I think it comes down to SATA to USB3 hosts in the external enclosures along with the USB3 translation, it just chokes from the high data rates from the SSDs. The OCZ Vertex4 and Samsung 830 are speed demons when connected directly to SATA. Connected to USB3, they're dogs. :(
 
This is exactly what I am referring to. Because the internal host is limited to 3Gbps, if I had 6g external drives I would only see 3G speeds out of them?

Is this incorrect?


Jeff Kilgroe said:
The internal SATA host within the Mac Pro itself is limited to 3Gbps. Perhaps that is what you're thinking? But that is the internal host on it's own and has no bearing on any other interface you might add.
(
Click to expand...
 
That's a good option Jeff. I'll just into the ATTO H680 card.

I don't really need USB3 until a client has a 2TB USB 3 drive full of media for a rushed edit. This kind of stuff happens quite often with the fasion week footage from LA and NY. Then skipping that USB 3 interface in my Mac Pro will come back to haunt me.
 
Will Keir said:
This is exactly what I am referring to. Because the internal host is limited to 3Gbps, if I had 6g external drives I would only see 3G speeds out of them?

Is this incorrect?
Click to expand...

The internal host is 3Gbps per channel, meaning each drive is allocated 3Gbps. Any cards you add in like the CalDigit or a Sonnet or ATTO, is completely independent of that. So with the ATTO H680 card, you have 8 channels at 6Gbps each. The ATTO H6F0 card gives you 16 channels at 6Gbps each.

Generally speaking, there are no hard drives out there that can saturate a 3Gbps connection. Some can on burst speeds, otherwise you need an SSD to fill that 3Gbps. You will also most likely have multiple drives inside your Mac Pro set up as a RAID, or at least you should. Without getting overly-analytical, if you put your OS / apps drive in one of the optical bays and then you stripe all 4 drives in all 4 trays on the primary host as a RAID-0, you have the potential for up to 12Gbps of throughput from that one RAID volume. With good 7200rpm 2TB HDD's, like the WD Black-X or Seagate Barracuda, you will get about 370MB/s sustained writes and 395MB/s sustained reads out of a 4-drive RAID-0 in a Mac Pro.

Unless you want the SAS connectivity or know for a fact you won't be needing USB3, I would go for the CalDigit card. The ATTO card is great, but will run you over $400 by the time you buy the card and a $55 HighPoint mini-SAS to eSATA fan-out cable.

I find the CalDigit card to be my most useful card in the Sonnet Thunderbolt box connected to my 2011 iMac. Gives me two each of the ports I need most that the iMac does not have.


You're not going to saturate a 6Gbps eSATA connection unless you connect a RAID to it. Plan on dual SSD or 4~5 HDD's together to get enough throughput to saturate a single 6Gbps port! 6Gbps in terms of real-world speed after overhead requirements is about 570MB/s.
 
Jeff Kilgroe said:
With good 7200rpm 2TB HDD's, like the WD Black-X or Seagate Barracuda, you will get about 370MB/s sustained writes and 395MB/s sustained reads out of a 4-drive RAID-0 in a Mac Pro.
Click to expand...

Good info as always, Jeff :-)
Question: I've got 3 WD 3TB 7200 striped to RAID 0 internally in my Mac Pro, and I'm getting ~330MB/s Write and 335MB/s Read presently. I'm considering using the optical bay for the OS and adding in a 4th drive to the RAID, but wondering about your comment and the fact that you specifically mentioned "2TB" drives. Is there a speed advantage to using a 2TB vs. a 3TB? I was under the impression it was the other way around, but I would appreciate your advice as always.
 
You will see a bit more speed by adding the 4th drive. Some of the speeds are subjective based on how you are measuring and whether you're making the assumption of 1000Kb = or 1024Kb = a MB.

In the early days of 3TB drives, they were noticeably slower. Some of the newer models are just as fast as 2TB models, or even a bit more so. The new 4TB drives hitting the market now are even faster as the latest and greatest have doubled the areal density on the platters, so use the same platter and head layouts as 2TB units, but with even faster internal processing ASICs and more cache. We'll have 6TB drives based on the same tech and 2TB mobile 2.5" drives in the next 4 to 6 months...


As you add drives in a RAID-0, the speed increase diminishes with each drive, but you should be around 400MB/s for read speed with 4 good drives, just about any way you measure it. If you're measuring non-binary Megabytes with a tool that doesn't really stress the system and using ideal block sizes, you can probably see 425MB/s or so... For example, in on system, I have 4 of those earlier mentioned 2TB WD HDDs and I'm getting 420MB/s writes and 440MB/s reads in the BMD drive test.
 
4TB are just hitting the market now. I personally wouldn't jump into them just yet... It took most manufacturers several months to get all the kinks out of the 2TB and 3TB units. So.. be careful. :)

Right now the Hitachi UltraStar and WD RE series are the best two options -- and really the only two, the Seagates are hard to come by. They're about $490 for the good 4TB units that you want. NewEgg usually has them in stock these days. Don't by the DeskStar or cheaper WD models -- usually $200 cheaper, but have less warranty and the firmware is tuned for individual desktop use, not RAID use.
 
There is a small thread with some speed tests of the FASTA-6GU3 here: http://www.reduser.net/forum/showthread.php?84493-Caldigit-FASTA-6GU3-Speed-Tests

Personally, I was very disappointed with it. I got 115MB/s copying from eSATA to eSATA. Both were G-Speed Q's in RAID0. At first I thought it was a bug, but Caldigit told me that is normal. Certainly both ports share one header, but I thought the sum of both ports should still reach SATA 6G speeds. Caldigit's answer was that it's just a low quality chip and that I should buy a 4e if I want more speed. (Even though the 4e is SATA 3G !)
 
we have atto H680 and its fastest way to unload cards :) i get half speed of this on macbook pro with Caldigit E-sata Card..
also i had Tempo SATA 3Gb Pro ExpressCard/34 which didnt worked with RedMags :/ now collecting dust on shelf.
 
everywhere is out of them... Might be worth a shot to try the for sale section I guess.
 
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